Path 2

Cathie Black Booed at Brooklyn Policy Meeting

January 20, 2011

New Schools Chancellor Cathie Black, already embattled based on her lackluster qualifications and bad jokes, had a tough showing last night in Brooklyn, where she was booed audibly (and on video!) at an Educational Policy meeting, as reported by New York‘s Daily Intel and the New York Daily News. It was a sad scene for a new boss.

Black, a former magazine executive at Hearst, was set to give a speech on a proposal to relieve Park Slope’s John Jay High School, which is attended mostly by minorities and poorly funded, by adding an “elite” school, Millenium High, in the same building. But before she could begin, parents waved condoms at her as reference to her dud of a joke that overcrowded schools could use some birth control. And then it got worse!

“We know that we need to help those who need it most,” Black told Wednesday night’s crowd.

“Then why do you want to close all those schools?” called out one of the many teachers who came from one of the 26 schools slated for closure by the Education Department.

Things got even more out of control from there:

In a rare example of a principal speaking out publicly against department policy, Jill Bloomberg, of Secondary School for Research, said that the placement of Millennium Brooklyn was an example of putting the interests of upper income white families above those of low-income families of color.

When she went a few seconds over her allotted time, the panel turned off the sound on Bloomberg’s microphone. She finished her speech by shouting and led the crowd in a chant, “Integration, yes; segregation, no.”